A datasheet that says "20 km" is not telling you 20 km. It is telling you 20 km against some target, at some reflectance, in some visibility — and those three numbers are usually left out or buried in a footnote.
That omission is why two suppliers can both quote "20 km" and mean completely different things, and why procurement arguments about range so often end with nobody able to prove anything.
So we published the table we use internally, with the footnote kept.
What is in it
59 records, one per model, 29 fields. 38 rangefinder modules, 12 laser sources, 9 single-point lidar sensors. Wavelengths 905 nm, 940 nm and 1535 nm; ranges from 9 m to 23,000 m.
The field that matters is range_condition. It holds the manufacturer's own sentence — target size, reflectance, visibility — copied verbatim, not normalised and not extrapolated:
{
"model": "LRF0815C",
"wavelength_nm": 1535,
"range_max_m": 8000.0,
"range_min_m": 15,
"range_condition": ">=8,000 m to a 2.3 m x 2.3 m target, 30% reflectance, visibility >23 km"
}
Where no condition is published, the field is empty. It is not filled with a guess, because a guessed condition is worse than a missing one: it looks like data.
Three things it will not do
It will not give you a "typical range". Averaging a 23 km row against a 12 km row produces a number that describes no product. Compare conditions, then compare ranges.
It will not normalise accuracy. Some models publish a fixed figure in metres, some publish a proportional one (D > 100 m, or a percentage). Where that happens the raw string ships alongside the scalar, and the raw string is authoritative.
It will not price anything. No prices anywhere in the dataset. Commercial terms are quoted per inquiry, because the right price depends on the interface, the housing and the volume, not on a table.
Why publish it at all
Two reasons, neither of them charitable.
First, a specification you can only get by emailing a sales address is a specification nobody checks. If the numbers are public, they can be diffed — including our own numbers, against our own earlier versions.
Second, it changes the conversation. Most supplier comparisons collapse because the two sides are quoting different measurements. When both sides publish the condition, the argument becomes about the actual decision: whether a 1535 nm module at this mass and this interface does the job.
Getting it
- Interactive page, with the field list and the known limits: specs.erdilrf.com/data
- JSON and CSV, same rows, mirrored and versioned: github.com/erdilrf-afk/erdi-lrf-specs
- Archived copy with a DOI, so it can be cited in a purchasing document or a paper: 10.5281/zenodo.23655337
Licence is CC BY 4.0. Use it, quote it, build on it.
If you find a row that is wrong, the errata address is on the dataset page. We would rather correct a row than defend it.
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